As a child Robert Smithson created a personal museum of natural history in the basement of his family home. This early interest in science, geography, and museums influenced many of Smithson’s artworks throughout his life. Between 1961 and 1963, Smithson created a series of collages showing evolving amphibians and dinosaurs, developing out of this childhood interest in natural history museums. Algae, algae combines collage turtles with the use of language as a visual tool, its accumulation of text suggesting the movement of the sea's dark green waves. Smithson’s interest in language led him to explore the visual possibilities of words in addition to his many articles and essays published in arts publications throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.